The Miracle of Tears

Scientists have found God’s greatness even in one of the most minute phenomena—human tears.

Evidence of our Creator is all around us—from the miracle of the atom’s intricate internal structure, to the design of the most complex piece of matter
in the universe, the human brain. Scientists have found God’s greatness
even in one of the most minute phenomena—human tears.

Biochemist William Frey has spent 15 years as head of a research
team studying tears. The team found that, although tear production organs were
once thought to be vestigial (left over from evolution) and no longer necessary
for survival, tears actually have numerous critical functions.1

Emotional tears are a response which only humans have, for only
people can weep. All animals that live in air produce tears to lubricate their
eyes. But only people possess the marvellous system that causes crying.2

Tears are secreted by your lacrimals—tiny, sponge-like
glands which rest above the eye against the eye socket. The average person
blinks every two to ten seconds. With every blink, the eyelid carries this miracle
fluid over your eye’s surface.

One of the most obvious functions of tears is to lubricate your
eyeball and eyelid, but they also prevent dehydration of your various mucous
membranes—and anyone with the ‘dry eye’ problem knows how
painful this can be. A severe lack of this lubrication produces a condition
requiring medication or therapy to save the victim’s eyesight. A thin
layer of oil on the exposed eye reduces evaporation of tears, keeping eye tissue
moist and soft.3 This oil is produced in your Meibomian glands located in the
eyelids.

Another important function of tears is that they bathe your
eyes in lysozyme, one of the most effective antibacterial and antiviral agents
known. Lysozyme, from lysos, to split, and enzyme (it is an enzyme which chemically
splits certain compounds) is the major source of the antigerm traits of tears.
Amazingly, lysozyme inactivates 90 to 95 per cent of all bacteria in a mere
five to 10 minutes.4 Without it, eye infections would soon cause most victims
to go blind.

Cry and feel better

One amazing discovery is that tear production may actually be
a way to aid a person to deal with emotional problems. This finding lends some
basis to the expression, ‘To cry it out helps a person feel better.’ Scientific
studies have found that after crying, people actually do feel better, both
physically and physiologically—and they feel worse by suppressing their
tears.5

Not unexpectedly, those who suffer from the inherited disease
familial dysautonomia not only cannot cry tears, but also have a very low ability
to deal with stressful events.6

At the St Paul Ramsey Medical Center in Minnesota, tears caused
by simple irritants were compared to those brought on by emotion. Researcher
William Frey found that stress-induced tears actually remove toxic ‘substances’
from the body.7 Volunteers were led to cry first from watching sad movies,
and then from freshly cut onions. The researchers found that the tears from
the movies, called emotional tears, contained far more toxic biological byproducts.
Weeping, they concluded, is an excretory process which removes toxic substances
that normally build up during emotional stress.

The simple act of crying also reduces the body’s manganese
level, a mineral which affects mood and is found in up to 30 times greater
concentration in tears than in blood serum. They also found that emotional
tears contain 24 per cent higher albumin protein concentration than tears caused
by eye irritants.8

The researchers concluded that chemicals built up by the body
during stress were removed by tears, which actually lowered stress. These include
the endorphin leucine-enkephalin, which helps to control pain, and prolactin,
a hormone which regulates milk production in mammals.

They found that one of the most important of those compounds
which removed tears was adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH), one of the best
indicators of stress. Suppressing tears increases stress levels, and contributes
to diseases aggravated by stress, such as high blood pressure, heart problems
and peptic ulcers.9

Aid to health

Ashley Montagu concluded that weeping contributes not only to
the health of the individual, but also to the group’s sense of community
and that ‘it tends to deepen involvement in the welfare of others’.10
Tears are an extremely effective method of communication, and can elicit sympathy
much faster than any other means. They effectively relate that you are sincere
about a certain concern, and anxious to deal with the problem.

Tears can be brought on not only by strong emotions, but also
by mechanical irritation of your eye, infections, or illness. Reflex or irritation
weeping appears to be ‘designed … as an emergency … mechanism’ because
the lacrimal glands automatically provide the proper level of lubrication and
protection when needed.11

The reason that onions cause crying is because they release
a chemical which turns into sulphuric acid on contact with the eye surface—a
chemical which would damage your eyes enormously if it were not for the tear
reflex which renders the suphuric acid almost harmless.

Onions make you cry because they release
a chemical which turns into sulphuric acid on conatact with your eye surface.
But your tear reflex renders the sulphuric acid almost harmless.

Tears normally flow constantly, and are effectively drained
into the lacrimal punctum, visible as a small dot at the nasal border of the
lower eyelid. The visible flow of tears on the cheeks is caused by a tear production
that is greater than the drainage system can handle, causing the overflow to
run down the cheek.

Tears constantly bathe each of your corneas (the transparent ‘windows’ of
the eyes). This not only prevents your eyes from drying out (which can cause
blindness if not corrected) but it can help greatly in washing out foreign
bodies such as dust, which is an omnipresent part of air.12 As
one author notes, ‘The
importance of tears can best be recognized by seeing what happens when someone
does not have them.’13

Not being able to secrete enough tears produces burning and
redness, and light itself becomes bothersome. The eyes itch and have a gritty
feeling. One sufferer described the condition as similar to having sand in
the eye. In time, ulcers develop on the cornea and loss of its transparency
often occurs.

What can we learn from all this?

That the seemingly simple and common response of producing tears
is enormously complex and, indeed, is an integral and necessary part of the
miracle called the human body. Without tears, life would be drastically different
for humans—in the short run enormously uncomfortable, and in the long
run eyesight, so important for everyday life, would be blocked out altogether.

Tears are just one of many miracles which work so well that
we take them for granted every day. And it is one more reason to realize that
our marvellous body is not the result of evolutionary trial and error.

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Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.